Great Western Coffee Shop

Some major problems with signalling between London Paddington and Slough,

Only two lines are open (the up and down main).

Usual scaling back of services.  Greenford branch suspended and some services to and from Oxford skipping stops between Hayes and Paddington.  Also some Bedwyn services cancelled between London and Reading.

Not connected with this, there have been problems between Reading and Didcot Parkway all morning because of poor rail conditions.  Delays of around 20 minutes for services heading towards Swindon have been typical.

Also, suspension of service Gloucester - Swindon earlymorning two days running, I think because of signal problems

And now:

Swindon Control Centre EVACUATED

The Integrated Control Centre (Western) is evacuating due to the fire alarms sounding.

(snip)

Further advice will be given when we return or have setup an emergency Control Centre.

Mod edit: Various mobile numbers quoted for internal use have been deleted.

Apologies for posting them, I copied it straight from JourneyCheck so I guess it was posted there by mistake.

Thanks for editing bobm, and also to Chris for the PM explaining what happened.

I must admit I didn't realise they were publically available on Journeycheck, however best we don't perpetuate the error.

Thank you for your understanding lordgoata.

Fortunately I didn't have too many problems getting home last night, however at the moment the punctuality of my daily journeys appears to be suffering due to various TSRs. There's already a long-standing one on the UM at Slough and another on the DM at Southall, now there are TSRs on both lines just to the west of Ealing Broadway. The 1706 from PAD which I take to TWY is now regularly about 5 minutes late which although is only a minor annoyance to me, I've noticed it's causing regular problems with the Henley branch connection.

Is there any information available on how long these TSRs will each continue to last?

The TSR on the up main at Slough has now been removed.

There has been a TSR on the down main at Ealing Broadway for a long time, however it was 100mph, so barely noticeable. However, this has recently been reduced to 50mph. The problem for an HST, which you'll probably have noticed, is that it isn't possible to get up to 125mph once out of Ealing Broadway before it has to start braking for the Southall TSR.
Generally speaking, Network Rail only publish (in private) end dates of TSRs if they are to enable a specific piece of engineering work to take place. If it is for another reason then they can have no fixed end date.

Also fairly significant signalling problems in Frome yesterday. 21:37 FRO - Bristol Temple Meads was cancelled (Skipped Frome AFAIK) and the 20:49 BRI - Weymouth also skipping Frome.

I'll see the Guard of that train next week who will no doubt fill me in on what happened :-X

And Signalling Problems today at Acton Main Line... Not very good FGW week by the sounds of of things!

....make that 21st November too.....bear in mind now that it's got a little bit colder and there are a few leaves blowing around, that together with the evenings drawing in inevitably means that everything will start to fail  ::) ............seriously though, last few days have not been good.........the signalling along the routes out of Paddington into the Thames Valley seems incredibly fragile.

Hardly a week goes by without significant or major signalling problems somewhere between Paddington and Reading,
causing often vast numbers of passengers to have their journey plans seriously delayed and disrupted.
It is interesting that the chances of these signalling problems happening during weekday daytimes seems greater than at other times..why ? ..this is when Network Rail staff and their contractors/sub contractors are out and about.

A few years ago Network Rail 'rationalised' their Signalling maintenance staff in the London area with resultant often slower responses to a problem as staff had to travel further/even across London to site.
Any money saved seems to clearly have been 'small fry' compared to the ongoing cost of delay payments to Train Operators.
Paddington to Reading must surely be the contender for the 2012-13 award for the most signalling problematic major rail route in Britain?

Yesterday's PPM for HSS was a meagre 35% according to FGW.co.uk.   Somewhat less than the target of 90%. Never mind, the last month's dire performance has guaranteed a 5% discount when I renew in January.

I was at a lecture last night by the Western Route Asset Manager (signalling) on the current modernisation programme. At the end, I asked him about reliability - basically that faults now are far too common. the renewal programme involves a huge number of new connections made at trackside, so how much will it eventually improve? The answer only had one clear point: that initially it would get worse. That was followed by a load of stuff about how reliability is managed, which did not really answer the question. Perhaps I should have asked what level of reliability other railways achieve, and how close NR would get to that.